The Radio Planet, Ralph Milne Farley [manga ereader txt] 📗
- Author: Ralph Milne Farley
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Myles heaved a sigh of self-reproach at having brought his friends to this sad end. But then, he reflected, Doggo had been in a situation in which conflict with the authorities and then execution would have been inevitable sooner or later. The revolution had been his one best bet, and it was no one’s fault that it had failed.
Now that Doggo and Formis were dead, there was no longer any obligation binding Myles to stay and fight. In fact, he owed it to his loved ones in Cupia to preserve his own life until he could find some way of rejoining them. So he set out to escape from the city.
For some time he threaded the corridors without meeting any ants, although occasionally there drifted down to him the sounds of fighting on the upper levels. But at last, as he rounded a turn, he saw before him a Formian, and it was one whom he recognized, namely the messenger ant who had brought to the trial the radiogram from Prince Yuri. The ant’s back was toward him. Cabot cautiously withdrew a step; then raising his rifle, he again advanced and fired full at his enemy.
But the hammer merely clicked. There was no explosion. The magazine was empty.
Cabot’s first impulse was to throw the weapon away. Then he reflected that even an unloaded gun might well serve to awe his enemies and hold them at a distance; so he retained it.
By this time the messenger ant had disappeared around a turn farther down the corridor, so Cabot hastened after him; for it had suddenly occurred to the earth-man that this ant was undoubtedly returning to the hidden radio set, whence he had come.
Radio! Means of a communication with his own continent, if he could but reach the instruments!
The messenger had announced at the trial that Yuri was in Cupia and knew of Cabot’s presence in this new land. Thus it was certain that complete wireless communication had been established between the two continents. But, equally, undoubtedly, this communication had been established at a wave-length which kept the knowledge of Cabot’s return pretty much a secret of Prince Yuri and his own followers. This information would probably induce the renegade prince to speed up whatever nefarious schemes he had afoot in Cupia.
But if Cabot could once get on the air and adjust the Formian sending set to the wave-length of Luno Castle, or run it through all its available wave-lengths, he could broadcast to the Cupian nation the fact that he was alive and well, and would return again—though he knew not how—to lead them. Such news should strengthen the hearts of the loyal Cupians to rally to the cause of his wife, the Princess Lilla, and his son, the baby king.
So he quickened his pace, and soon caught sight again of the messenger ant. From, then on he stealthily stalked his quarry, who led him through many a winding passage-way, before finally they emerged from the city into the open fields.
Beyond the fields lay the rocky foothills of a mountain range. Caution dictated that Cabot remain under the shelter of the city walls until the Formian disappeared among the rocks. Then he ran lightly across the plain to take up the trail once more.
As he, too, gained the rocks, he glanced back to see if his departure had been noted. No, there was no sign of life. Evidently the fighting had drawn all the inhabitants to the interior of the city. So, with a sigh of relief, Myles hurried after the messenger ant.
At the place where Myles had noticed the Formian enter the rocks there was the well-defined beginning of a trail; so up this winding trail he sped, and soon caught sight of his quarry. From that time on more caution was necessary, but nevertheless the pursuer was able to keep the pursued always in sight until, just after a turn in the road had obscured his view, Myles came upon a place where the way forked.
Pausing, he scratched his head in dismay, then carefully examined the ground for evidences of claw marks; but none were apparent. Dropping to his hands and knees, the earth-man scrutinized the dirt with even more care; and at last, imagining that he observed some slight scratches to the right, he took the right-hand branch.
It was necessary for him to proceed with great rapidity, if he would catch up with the messenger ant, so Myles broke into a dog trot. On and on he ran; up, into the rocky mountains.
At last he sat down exhausted on a large boulder, just as the silvery sky turned crimson in the west, and darkness crept up out of the east. It was quite evident that he had taken the wrong road at the fork, and also that he must now spend the night, half clad and alone amid the rocks of the mountains of this strange new continent.
VLOST AMID THE ROCKS
But although Myles Cabot was lost, he was free for the first time since his return to Poros.
So not disheartened he arose and proceeded along the trail, looking for food and a place to spend the night; and presently came upon a “green cow,” as he was wont to call the aphids which are kept both by Cupians and Formians for the honey-dew which they produce.
It made no objection to Cabot’s approach, nor to his manipulating the two horns which projected from its back, with the result that the tired man was presently regaling himself with a satisfying drafts of green “milk” from a leafy cup.
The bush, which furnished the leaf to fashion the cup, closely resembled the tartan bushes of Cupia, whose heart-shaped leaves are put to so many uses in that country. Myles Cabot accordingly stripped off a considerable portion of the foliage, and lay down in a bed of warm, thick green for the night.
The morning dawned silver bright. Myles drew another meal from the grazing aphid and then pressed on up the rocky defile. He did not dare return for fear of meeting ant-men; and besides, now that a night’s rest had to some extent tempered his chagrin at not catching up with the particular ant-man whom he had been pursuing, he could not be sure he had taken the wrong road after all. So on he went, up the rocky path.
Around noon the path petered out at the top of an eminence which gave Cabot an opportunity to survey the surrounding scenery. To the westward lay the city from which he had fled. What had become, he wondered, of the supporters of his friend Doggo and of Formis, the ant-queen, whose cause he had espoused? According to Emu, Doggo and Formis were both dead, or Cabot would never have deserted them.
Cabot turned his attention next to the northward. To his great joy, on the next peak to the one where he sat, there stood two rough wooden towers, spanned by an aerial.
He decided to cut across country and attempt to approach the installation by stealth. So he started scrambling down into the intervening valley.
Never before had the earth-man traveled through such difficult country. As soon as he had gone a short distance below the summit he encountered a continuous expanse of boulders, ranging in size from a man’s head to twenty feet or more in diameter, and piled aimlessly together. Lying crossways in every direction, upon and between the rocks, were the gaunt skeletons of fallen trees in all stages of decay.
The sharp edges of the rocks cut and tore the bare feet of the earth-man, while the splinters of the fallen trees jabbed his body. Time and again he slipped and nearly fell into one of the chasms which yawned between the boulders, and on one of these occasions he must have inadvertently let go the ant-rifle which he had treasured so far so carefully, for presently he noticed that it was gone.
But to all this there was one extenuating feature, although Myles did not realize it at the time, namely that his physical pain and the need for constant vigilance on his part so occupied his mind as to spare him from the mental pain which had been his almost constant companion since his return to Poros. The attention necessary to avoid misjudging a jump, or slipping into a dark deep hole, or being impaled by a tree-branch, crowded out of his mind even his great love and anxiety for Princess Lilla and Baby Kew.
Through the maze of obstacles Cabot toiled all day long.
Oh, to reach the radio station established by his enemy Yuri, and get into touch with his own continent. Thus he could learn what was happening in Cupia, and also give word of his own safe arrival on the planet. Safe, hm! He smiled grimly at the word.
“I must reach that station,” he thought, “and then, when I have talked with Cupia, I must secure a Formian plane by hook or by crook, and brave the boiling seas. If ants have crossed those seas safely, if Yuri has safely crossed them twice, then why cannot I, the Minorian?”
As he communed thus with himself, a faint pink flush appeared in the sky. Slowly, painfully he continued his way. Gradually the pink light turned to crimson in the west and then darkened to a royal purple. Gradually the black night crept up out of the east. But also gradually the boulders became smaller and smaller as he clambered upward, until just as darkness finally enveloped the planet, the tired man gained the smooth rocks of the summit, and lay down amid some leaves.
He had had nothing to eat or drink since his breakfast of green milk that morning. He had undergone an exhausting journey. His feet were bruised and cut, his body covered with innumerable scratches, and he was weary, thirsty and hungry. But he had almost reached the point which he had been seeking, and this thought comforted him as his eyes closed in healthy and dreamless sleep.
Next morning early he was up, rested, parched and ravenous. As the first faint pink tinged the eastern sky Myles Cabot shook off the leaves and completed the ascent.
It only required a few moments for him to reach the top, a narrow plateau, about a mile in length, near the farther end of which there stood a small cabin with its two towers and aerial.
With a cry of joy—which he knew the earless Formians could not hear—he raced toward it. The huge chain and lock, which secured its door on the outside, indicated that it was unoccupied, and a glance through the narrow slitlike windows confirmed this.
The glance through the window also revealed the presence of a complete radio sending and receiving set of the same general hook-up which he himself had adapted for the use of Cupians and Formians on the other continent.
“Imitation is the most insulting form of flattery,” as Poblath, the Cupian philosopher, used to say. Yet Cabot was willing to brook the insult, until suddenly it dawned on him that the set had no earphones nor microphone!
Of course not, since it was designed for use by creatures who possessed neither ears nor vocal speech! Gone then was all hope of news from home, even if he could succeed in breaking in. At the most, he would merely be able, by interposing an interrupter in the primary or secondary of that aerial circuit, to send a dot-dash message across the boiling seas—I use the term “aerial circuit,” because “antenna circuit” would be ambiguous, as the latter term might have either its conventional earth significance, or might mean the circuit in which the Formian operator would place his living antennae in sending and receiving.
Well, even a chance to send to Cupia a message to the effect that he was free and safe, would be worth something. Myles Cabot tried the slitlike windows, and finding them too narrow, slid quickly down the near-by slope, soon to return laboriously with a twenty-pound rock, which he heaved against the door.
Again and again he heaved the rock, until he had the satisfaction of seeing the door crack and then give. Finally a large enough opening was effected to afford passage for a man, although not for a Formian; and through this breach Myles Cabot squeezed into the station.
A few minutes’ scrutiny familiarized him with the details of the hook-up, the generator set, and the trophil-engine. Everything was in running order and the fuel tank was full. So he fashioned a rude sending key, broke one of the circuits and tied in the key. Then he warmed-up and cranked the trophil-engine, clutched-in the generator, threw the main switch, and sat down to flash across the seas the message which was to hold firm his partisans in Cupia until he could join them.
But at that instant an arrow hummed through the hole in the door, and struck quivering in the bench beside him.
Cabot sprang to his feet and slid home the huge
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